Google shut down the Google+ Moderators Community six weeks ago and never bothered to tell anyone
I've been trying to reach out to G+ Communities especially over the course of the shutdown, a process I'd found frustrating. There are few mechanisms for directly contacting community moderators (unlike, say Reddits "message moderators" feature), and there are few forums for G+ Community owners and moderators to get and exchange information.
One of those is the Google+ Moderators community itself, the official Google channel for mods.
I've been posting and commenting there occasionally over the course of the shutdown particularly my statistical analyses of Community size and activity. There'd been little if any response.
I thought it was simply that moderators on Google+ are apathetic. It's not that.
Six weeks ago, without informing anyone, Google effectively shut down the forum. Posts are "HfR", held for review, and unless they're approved by a moderator, they won't appear for other users. The submitter does see their posts in the community and has no indication that the post has not been submitted.
You can confirm this by viewing the community from an Incognito / unauthenticated session. Doing that just now, I realised that the forum had seen no new activity since December 10, 2018.
The two screenshots here show this. The two-column view with the visible "Sign In" button at top right, shows an Incognito view, with the most recent posts being dated 6 weeks ago. The three-column view is what I see logged in as "Edward Morbius", with several posts I've submitted in the weeks since then. I can see those. Nobody else can.
Incognito view of Google+ Moderators community
Logged-in view of Google+ Moderators community
And if anyone else has posted to the community in the meantime, nobody but them can see those posts either.
This is not only extremely disrespectful and poor business practice, but it's straight up low class.
Google appear to be falling apart.
In other news: You cannot rely on the fact that posts to Google+ will be visible to other users, most especially not in Google's own Communities and spaces. Google are systematically dismantling the ability for users themselves to be informed on Google+.
If you're not using an off-Google channel for information already, start doing so NOW.
Again: there is a subreddit available at https://reddit.com/r/plexodus, devoted to the G+ exodus, run by me. You're strongly encouraged to use this. There are also /r/googleplus and /r/google, run by others, or other communities can be created. Please join one or more of these.
We have and will link other sites as well, and maintain a list of exodus communities.
The unofficial G+ Owners and Moderators Community does seem to be reliably available presently.
